As more small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) turn to their value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) for solutions to their security needs, these partners have responded by expanding their security services for smaller customers. This means more customers, more chaos and increased pressure to do more work with the same resources. In response, many MSSPs adopt automated tools that make it easier for them to deploy and manage security services across a wide range of small customers, rather than investing in those necessary to support only a few large ones.
WatchGuard’s Director of Product Management for MSSP partners Himanshu Verma and Kevin Willette, CEO of our Platinum Partner Verus Corp., spoke with Channel Futures about this transition to the MSSP model and what kinds of tools these new security service providers need to effectively handle the surge of SMB customers.
Some of the new capabilities that MSSPs are asking for include closed-loop ticketing, asset synchronization, remote reporting and management capabilities, and integrations with PSA and RMM tools. The key, according to both Himanshu and Kevin, is creating combinations of different products that don’t take a huge amount of resources to manage. “[Channel partners] need to make these multiple vendor solutions work together to provide a true security solution rather than just satisfying a break-fix SLA or counting on gross product resale margins,” said Himanshu. Kevin agreed, saying “You look at the overall picture of how the manufacturers have looked at putting together a program, and [they all have] different ways of deploying, supporting and pushing out patches across a wide range of MSP customers with different needs and different hardware appliances and software subscriptions.”
Read the full article in Channel Futures to learn more about the three tools MSSPs are asking for most. You can find more information about WatchGuard’s MSSP partner program here and read more expert MSSP insight from Himanshu here on Secplicity.